Death Rays
by Melrick
Summary: Four and a half billion people were going to die, and Captain Kathryn Janeway watched on.


Title: Death Rays  
  
Author: Melrick (melrick72@yahoo.com)  
  
  
  
Four and a half billion people were going to die. And Captain Kathryn Janeway of the U.S.S Voyager watched on.  
  
Never in her life could she remember feeling quite so helpless. Not even the helpless feeling of being stranded in the Delta Quadrant could eclipse this. She was about to sit by while four and a half billion people died, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do to stop it.  
  
They had arrived in a system similar to Sol in many ways, with one planet containing humanoid life forms orbiting a sun. From their scans, they found that the humanoids were at a technological point roughly compared to Earth's early to mid Twenty First century. They were a pre-warp civilisation. It had been sometime since the crew of Voyager had been able to spend some resting and relaxing, so they had decided to spend some time in the area, inconspicuously mingling with the mostly friendly humanoids.  
  
They had all returned to Voyager and were preparing to get under way, when Ensign Harry Kim announced something startling. The two neutron stars of a nearby binary system had collided. The resulting explosions of these phenomena are similar to supernovae - the greatest explosions in the universe. As a comparison, if Sol's sun were a binary system that exploded, the explosion would reduce the entire solar system to its fundamental atomic particles. This planet, though, was far enough away to survive the direct effects of the explosion. Although whether that was a good thing or not was debatable.  
  
But surviving the initial explosion was only one thing. Surviving the gamma rays that were racing towards them at the speed of light was another thing entirely.  
  
The deadly gamma rays would bombard the planet for two weeks. They would pierce through rock, water and buildings. The rays would penetrate living cells with ease and, in the process, interact with the DNA in the nuclei to cause the mutations that initiate cancers. But for the vast majority of the population, this won't be a problem - virtually all living things will have already been struck down with fatal radiation sickness and burns.  
  
Soon after the arrival of the gamma rays, the atmosphere would be bombarded with slightly slower-moving cosmic particles. These would interact with atoms in the top layer of the atmosphere to form 'muons'. Muons are large, unstable atomic particles that are able to penetrate thousands of metres below the surface, smashing into and through cells as though they weren't there.  
  
As if this weren't bad enough, the surge of radiation would obliterate the ozone layer, allowing the intense ultra-violet radiation of the sun to reach the planet's surface, where it would destroy the remaining plant life. Any creatures that somehow managed to survive the initial blast have little, if anything, left to eat.  
  
Ensign Kim had told Captain Janeway that it would likely take at least 100,000 years for the planet to recover.  
  
And there was nothing she could do about it. The planet had a population of four and a half billion people; transporting people in the time they'd had would have been pointless and achieved little. Besides, that would have been a direct breach of the Prime Directive.  
  
But if breaking the Prime Directive would save the planet's population then she would do it. But it wouldn't achieve that. This had been the only class M planet they'd come across in the last two weeks. It might be another two weeks before they found another class M planet.  
  
Voyager was protected against the gamma rays, but that did nothing to help the planet. But they hadn't given up without a fight. Janeway had placed all her scientist on the job, trying to come up with some kind of solution. They worked day and night trying to find even a partial solution. But they had come up empty-handed. One lone starship against the power of a binary pulsar collision was like a piece of tissue paper up against a phaser blast.  
  
"Computer, how long until the gamma rays hit the planet?" She had a pretty good idea how much time was left, but she asked anyway.  
  
"Three minutes and twenty nine seconds until the gamma rays contact the planet," came the cold but brutally honest answer.  
  
Captain Kathryn Janeway sighed as she watched the planet on the small desktop viewer in her ready room. She counted down the time in her head.  
  
'Two minutes.'  
  
'One minute.'  
  
'Thirty seconds.'  
  
'Ten seconds.'  
  
'Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one...'  
  
"Time's up," she whispered to the empty room.  
  
There was no obvious change to the image on her view screen. But there would be, eventually.  
  
"Chakotay to Captain Janeway." Chakotay's smooth, usually soothing, voice came over the comm system. But she barely heard it.  
  
He waited a full minute before he buzzed the door of her ready room. He got no reply, but he entered anyway. Not too many people would have the nerve to do that; he was the only person that could do it and get away with it.  
  
He stood just inside the closed door, watching her stare at the viewer.  
  
"Kathryn," he almost whispered.  
  
He got no reaction for a few moments, before she finally spoke up.  
  
"Chakotay."  
  
"Captain?"  
  
"Lay in a course for the Alpha quadrant." Her quiet voice betrayed no obvious emotion, but Chakotay knew her well enough to know that she was having a hard time with this.  
  
"Aye, Captain." But he didn't turn to leave. He knew her as well as anybody, and he knew there were times to get her to talk, and times to just leave her alone. He was trying to decide which time this was when she made up his mind for him.  
  
"Chakotay, you don't have to worry about me. I'll be fine." She gave him a grin, reminding him that she knew him just as much as he knew her. He smiled in spite of himself.  
  
"Aye, Captain." This time, he turned and left her ready room.  
  
Kathryn soon felt the ship enter warp. She sighed, a part of her feeling like she had abandoned them. Usually, when she was depressed, she preferred to retreat to solitude, not welcoming any contact with anybody.  
  
'But not this time,' she said to herself as she stood, exited her ready room and entered the bridge. She was welcomed by the smile of Chakotay, the smile that always managed to make a part of her feel like a giddy schoolgirl again. She smiled to herself, shook her head slightly, and made her way to the Captain's chair. 


End file.
